Month: September 2007

Customer surveys are a brilliant idea, no? No, not always. When you try to measure superior service and the emotional connection a customer has with you or your product, it can be difficult to get data that really helps pinpoint where and how to improve. In this article I will highlight some pitfalls in satisfaction surveys and measures and suggest some simpler approaches to measurement that will help drive the right kind of change. Continue reading “Getting a grip on emotions: 2) Who cares what you think?”

This week I will be putting up three posts on the emotional element of superior service. I will be covering:
1) How creating an emotional connection can build customer loyalty
2) Where customer surveys can let you down
3) Why, paradoxically, customers don’t always come first

At the risk of turning this blog into a restaurant column, John Maeda’s excellent simplicity blog features an interesting item on his visit to a restaurant where his white table napkin was removed and replaced with a black one. Maeda treats this as an example of trust – by demonstrating an attention to detail. Continue reading “Simplicity, trust and black napkins”

The discussions on superior service examples yielded a detailed response from management consultant Jane Northcote (www.janenorthcote.com) whose take on superior service recognises that it’s a two-way transaction. Jane writes:

Customer service is traditionally regarded as an attribute of a company: Waitrose provides ‘good’ customer service, an electronics discount store provides ‘bad’ customer service. Equally, however, it is true that customer service is an attribute of the customer. Some people experience good customer service, and others bad, even from the same organisation. Why is this? Continue reading “The customer’s role in superior service”

Delivering superior service requires organisations to develop five essential capabilities in their service organisations. These are all straightforward: getting the basics right, making a personal connection, focusing resources, flexing the rules and going the extra ‘mile’.

This category features stories of organisations which have provided me and other contributors with a good example of superior service. Where possible I will provide feedback to the organisation in question and, if they are willing (they should be!), I will share with you the critical success factors they have put in place to deliver superior service.

If you want to lay the foundation for superior customer service then one of the enablers you need to put in place is to make sure people have a basic level of etiquette or good manners.

I was recently on holiday in France and was struck by how French people are conditioned to be polite by comparison with the British. Carry out most transactions – however mundane – and you will be greeted with ‘Bonjour’ at the start and ‘Bon journee’ at the end – that’s the equivalent of ‘Good day’ and ‘Have a nice day’ to book-end the interaction. Continue reading “Basic etiquette: the foundation for superior service”